What Blows in with the Wind?

Abstract

The shift toward renewable forms of energy for electricity generation in the electricity generation industry has clear implications for the spatial distribution of generating plant. Traditional forms of generation are typically located close to the load or population centers, while wind and solar-powered generation must be located where the energy source is found. In the case of wind, this has meant signi…cant new investment in wind plant in primarily rural areas that have been in secular economic decline. This paper investigates the localized economic impacts of the rapid increase in wind power capacity at the county level in Texas. Unlike Input-Output impact analysis that relies primarily on levels of inputs to estimate gross impacts, we use traditional econometric methods to estimate net localized impacts in terms of employment, personal income, property tax base, and key public school expenditure levels. While we …nd evidence that both direct and indirect employment impacts are modest, signi…cant increases in per capita income accompany wind power development. County and school property tax rolls also realize important bene…ts from the local siting of utility scale wind power although peculiarities in Texas school funding shift localized property tax bene…ts to the state.JEL Classi…cation: H23, H72, Q42, Q48, R11.

Impacts of wind power development on Oklahoma’s public schools

“…Following from previous where the relationships between presence of wind turbines and socioeconomic characteristics and public school attributes were analyzed at the county level in Texas, relevant variables were collected and analyzed for this research [15,16]. These variables include percentage of revenue from local and Fig.…”

“…Similar to the previous study, another effort examined the community-level impacts of wind power development at the county level in Texas [16]. A total of 222 counties were analyzed consisting of 31 with industrialscale wind power and 191 without wind power.…”

“…Variables analyzed included employment, personal income, property taxes, and public school expenditures. This effort found modest employment benefits in the form of direct and indirect employment associated with wind power development, but that per capita income increased significantly [16]. Furthermore, the authors found counties and schools benefited from increased property taxes.…”

“…Furthermore, the authors found counties and schools benefited from increased property taxes. However, while districts with wind power development have experienced changes in the property tax base, the relationship between increased tax base and per pupil spending is most likely less pronounced due to the school funding structure discussed previously whereby local funds are distributed across the state from richer to poorer districts [15,16].…”

“…To date, these efforts have most closely examined the impacts of utility-scale wind power development on local communities, public schools in particular [15,16]. This shows that in-depth analysis on how wind power development affects schools has been done in only a limited number of cases and not for Oklahoma.…”